of the Company by Mr. Hastings in order that he might have the whole records and registers of the Company under his control.  You have seen that the contract and commission for the purchase of stores and provisions, an enormous job, was given to Mr. Belli, an obscure man, for whom Mr. Hastings offers himself as security, under circumstances that went to prove that Mr. Belli held this commission for Mr. Hastings.  These, my Lords, are things that cannot be slurred over.  The Governor-General is corrupt; he corrupts all about him; he does it upon system; he will make no inquiry.

My Lords, I have stated the amount of the sums which he has squandered away in these contracts; but you will observe that we have brought forward but five of them.  Good God! when you consider the magnitude and multiplicity of the Company’s dealings, judge you what must be the enormous mass of that corruption of which he has been the cause, and in the profits of which he has partaken.  When your Lordships shall have considered this document, his defence, which I have read in part to you, see whether you are not bound, when he imputes to us and throws upon us the cause of all his corruption, to throw back the charge by your decision, and hurl it with indignation upon himself.

But there is another shameless and most iniquitous circumstance, which I have forgotten to mention, respecting these contracts.  He not only considered them as means of present power, and therefore protected his favorites without the least inquiry into their conduct, and with flagrant suspicion of a corrupt participation in their delinquency, but he goes still farther:  he declares, that, if he should be removed from his government, he will give them a lease in these exorbitant profits, for the purpose of securing a corrupt party to support and bear him out by their evidence, upon the event of any inquiry into his conduct,—­to give him a razinama, to give him a flourishing character, whenever he should come upon his trial.  Hear what his principles are; hear what the man himself avows.

        “Fort William, October 4, 1779.

“In answer to Mr. Francis’s insinuation, that it is natural enough for the agent to wish to secure himself before the expiration of the present government, I avow the fact as to myself as well as the agent.  When I see a systematic opposition to every measure proposed by me for the service of the public, by which an individual may eventually benefit, I cannot hesitate a moment to declare it to be my firm belief, that, should the government of this country be placed in the hands of the present minority, they would seek the ruin of every man connected with me; it is therefore only an act of common justice in me to wish to secure them, as far as I legally can, from the apprehension of future oppression.”

Here is the principle avowed.  He takes for granted, and he gives it the name of oppression, that the person who should succeed him would take away those unlawful and wicked emoluments, and give them to some other.  “But,” says he, “I will put out of the Company’s power the very means of redress.”